Tag Archives: 60 years of aima

India has become a leading country in the world, but it still has some way to go before it can consider itself a truly great nation. India needs to reimagine itself as a nation without poverty and shortages and as a nation of capability and prosperity. NITI Aayog has to play a pivotal role in shaping the transformative policies and improving policy outcomes.

Let me start off by complimenting ourselves, as Indians, for being in the midst of what I’ve always called India’s historically unique attempt at undertaking a triple transition simultaneously. I don’t see anywhere else in history or geography that there are other countries that have taken the social, political, and economic transitions simultaneously, these have always been sequential, and that’s something we’ve had to do because of what we were and what our independent leaders of our national movement decided. They simply decided that India could not afford to first take the economic transition where all the liberties would be closed and there would be no democracies and so on, and Mr Ambedkar ensured that you couldn’t undertake an economic transition without the social transition. And if you look at this huge achievement that we have had over the last 70 years, we very often tend to underestimate that. The inversion of the social pyramid in our country, where you’ve had a Dalit woman being the chief minister of the largest province in our country thrice, has been achieved practically and democratically without any bloodshed or violence. And states after states from Tamil Nadu to Bihar to UP we’ve seen that social transition happens over the last 70 years which for example cost millions of lives in the Soviet Union and China, and is doing so in Africa at the moment.

Shri Sunil Munjal, Shri Chandrashekhar, Shri Mohandas Pal, Shri Nikhil Swahney, Shri Sanjay Kirloskar, Miss Rekha Sethi, distinguished guests, ladies, and gentlemen. Some years back two management gurus had postulated that in a complex and dynamic global competitive environment adaptive capability is the key to survival and growth and that Indian businesses will find themselves on the road to rapid growth when they learn to think and act adaptively. The challenge before the Indian corporate sector today in the face of continuing low level of global growth and rapid changes in the technology of production and preferences of the end consumers is how to sustain their growth in times of recession that endangers protectionist regimes while competing in a fast evolving technological landscape.

It’s pleasure for me to be present amongst you this evening when we are celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of AIMA. You can be proud of sustaining a culture of excellence for six decades. The achievements of the last sixty years, I am sure shall motivate you to even greater heights in the years to come. When you began your journey in 1957, the country was entered into the phase of industrialization, because the major industrial policy thrust was given in 1956 industrial policy resolution. It was the launching of the second five year plan period and subsequently, you have seen how India progressed. And from a country when it began its independence 70 years ago and 10 years before you began your journey, it was one of the poorest countries in the world for more than half a century. From 1900 to 1950 the economy registered just below 1 percent annual average GDP growth. India was in deficit. At that juncture, your organization took a giant leap I must say, not in darkness but with definite aims and objectives that we must come out, fully exploit our potentials, particularly amongst our youth. Give them managerial tools, sharpen their skills and make them the best available many years to manage. It is not merely the management of material. It is also the management of the ethos, their culture and also to carry on the legacy of a heritage which is of 5000 years old civilization.